Halo: Hell Rising
by L1m3xx
Summary: Two years have passed since the end of Halo 3, Master Chief and Cortana are considered lost to space forever. All seems at peace until an enemy far greater than the flood arises. Now the Master Chief and a nearly rampant Cortana must uncover the mystery.
1. Legend

Halo: Hell Rising

Section 1

It's been two years since the end of the Human-Covenant War. Humans and Elites, as well as the former members of the covenant, now have an Interstellar government. The Master Chief is still missing. As the Aft section of the Forward Unto Dawn hurtles towards a planet that appears similar to Earth. The Master Chief is awoken and prepares to explore his new "Home", But what lies underneath, is the true mystery. Long ago abandoned by the Forerunner, this planet may hold something so terrible, that even the Flood would not dare touch this place

Part 1: Legend

"Chief?...Chief?...Can You hear me?" a woman's voice called out as the Master Chief awoke from cryostasis.

"Cortana?" the chief said as he stepped out of the cryo pod. "Where are we?"

"Judging by the stellar coordinates, we are somewhere near Betelgeuse" Cortana said as her holographic image sprung to life from the holotank. But what's interesting is that there's a planet orbiting this star."

"A planet?" the chief inquired. "Isn't the Betelgeuse system designated as an uninhabitable?"

"That doesn't mean that there can't be a planet down there." Cortana replied. "But the Chances of life are slim; I'll run a scan to check for a breathable atmosphere."

"Then I'll head to the armory, we may need some firepower" the chief said as he grabbed his MA5C Assault Rifle and attached it to his back. Floating though the corridors of the aft section of the Forward Unto Dawn, the chief still did not feel at as he would have had his feet been planted firmly on the ground with dirt under his boots. Even though the frigate was un-manned except for himself and Cortana, he still did not like ships of any kind; he couldn't act if they were attacked.

"Master Chief, The atmospheric analysis is done" Cortana broadcasted over the radio "It appears that the atmosphere is breathable, but it has a higher than normal Sulfur Dioxide content in its atmosphere. So it's likely that there is high geological activity. The average surface temperature is 30 degrees centigrade"

"What's the possibility of rescue?" the Chief asked as he took as many AP rounds for the MA5C. "If this is Betelgeuse then our best bet is to beam a transmission to Sanghelios, But… to beam a transmission to the Elite home world would drain the remaining power in the reserves."

"Beam the transmission, we are going home, tell the Elites to meet us on the surface" the chief requested "when your done we'll go planet side and try to survive." "There's a Lifeboat two decks down, take the service elevator that I'm marking on your HUD, it leads straight to the Life boat" Cortana said as the SPARTAN took a Shotgun and a Battle Rifle and loaded them into a crate with as much ammunition as possible. He wished the crate would fit more weapons and ammo but it was too small to fit the M41 SSR MAV/AW Rocket Launchers or the Spartan Lasers that were aboard the armory, he would have to come back to ships crash site for those. He holstered an M6D pistol and added HE pistol ammo to the crate. The chief headed towards the service elevator that was marked on his HUD.

"Chief, when you get off the elevator there's a holotank next to the elevator door; pick me up when you get there." Cortana said shortly before returning to her task of trying to land the hulk of metal they were on that was hurtling straight for the planet orbiting Betelgeuse.

When the chief stepped off the elevator, he retrieved Cortana and loaded the weapons and ammo that he had stocked up on into the escape pod. He strapped himself into the pilot's seat, "Not going to stand this time?" Cortana quipped.

"There's no rush, so no reason to stand." The chief replied calmly while prepping the escape vehicle. "Hold on" Cortana said "What is it?" the chief asked impatiently. "I was reviewing the feeds from the frigates scans and noticed an anomaly" she said "What anomaly?" the chief inquired

"It appears that there are life signs on this planet, weather they are sentient or not is unknown" Cortana replied "and they don't match anything in the UNSC's or covenant databases, there appears to be many different life signs as well"

"So there may be a chance of ambush when we land" the Chief said as he got up from the pilots chair, and headed towards the crate of supplies, picked up his MA5C, found a fresh clip and slammed it home.

"It's a possibility, but they could all be different forms of plant life."

"So we won't know until we get there" the chief headed back to the pilot's seat with the Assault Rifle in hand. By the time the chief had sat down the escape pod had begun its re-entry. It would only be a matter of time, before contact with the planet and its life forms would happen.

From the surface of the world, the escape pod burned a bright red as it was engulfed in flames. A trail of black smoke followed its descent, as screamed across the sky, breaking the sound barrier. It passed over one of the many mountain ranges and crashed in a nearby valley, with a deafening bang.

When the dust settled around the escape pod, the Master Chief got up from his seat moved to secure his LZ. Stepping out of the pod he swept his Assault Rifle in a wide arc from left to right checking that nothing was going to meet him when he began to circle around the craft securing the crash site.

"That's odd" Cortana's voice declared "Your suits Trans Comm. system is indicating there are radio signals 3 clicks due north" the chief paused his movement, when he heard the news. "Then that means that there's a much greater chance of getting off this rock." The chief turned around and re-entered the pod, he grabbed the Battle Rifle he stashed in the crate earlier and a full combat load for it.

He chose the battle rifle due to his need for a mid-long ranged weapon for the open terrain that he would be traversing. The chief placed the Assault Rifle on his back and raised the Battle Rifle. He'll have to come back for the rest of the ammunition later, even though his boot was on dirt, the chief was still uneasy with placing faith in the possibility that Forward Unto Dawn had some vehicles in it so he could drive instead of having to hoof it out.

"I'm marking the origin of the signal on your HUD." Cortana's voice played through the speaker in the chief's helmet. Setting off for the location marked on his HUD, the chief made long strides to cover the distance from the lifeboat to the beacon.


	2. Contact

Part 2: Contact

Near the remains of the fortress world that was Reach, an Elite controlled CCS Class Battle cruiser was patrolling the sector while providing Aid to the humans who were trying to re-terra-form the world which some of them had called home. The single vessel would had proven to be more than a match for a pair of Brute controlled ships, that had slipped in system in a vain attempt to seek revenge against the Elites and their Human Allies.

During the battle the Elites merely disabled the two ships allowing the Human Military to capture the ships, and take them for study. Though the Elites and Humans were allies the Elites felt that the humans should be allowed to have comparable levels of technology if only to defend themselves from the few remaining Covenant Loyalists that were around.

On the bridge of the battle cruiser, there were mainly Elites, a few Engineers floated about fixing damaged panels. Two Elites, however, stood out from the rest, mainly due to the styling of the first armor and its uniqueness; it had an ancient look to it, like something that had been passed down over the ages.

The Second, Elite had nothing special about his armor , it was more in his face that made him stand out, specifically his mandibles, or the lack of half of them. Rtas` Vadum was what he went by. After losing two of his mandibles on a SpecOps mission aboard the Infinite Succor at Installation 04, he went on to fight countless times against Heretics, Flood and the Brute traitors.

Rtas stood up from his captain's chair, and walked towards the center of the bridge. The other Elite stood in the center listening to the bridges crew, when one of them reported a transmission coming from a star system that humans refer to as Betelgeuse. "Sir this signal is unencrypted" one of the bridge crew reported to Rtas. "It says something about crashing on a planet near Betelgeuse something about a SPARTAN and the Human number 117"

The Elite in the center of the bridge held his head up upon hearing those words. "SPARTAN hmm"

"What troubles you Arbiter?" Rtas had asked while walking to him

"I wonder if this is the same SPARTAN that we fought alongside with on the Ark." The Arbiter walked towards Rtas. "We are leaving system, inform the humans that we have a matter to attend to and another battle cruiser will be along within the hour." The Arbiter began to walk towards the bridge's exit when Rtas spoke up.

"Where are we headed?"

"To Betelgeuse, if he is there then we are duty bound to find him" he continued walking until he left the bridge.

"You heard the Arbiter! Head to the origin of that signal" Rtas Commanded "we will find out who or what has sent that signal, be it friendly or be it foe!" the Elites obeyed his commands and plotted a slipspace course for Betelgeuse. The Shadow of Intent began its leave of the former stronghold. It quickly exited out system and prepared to glide into the slipspace stream.

During the journey through slipspace the Arbiter retired from the bridge to his quarters. There he pondered about the war and why through a cruel twist of fate the humans and the covenant had gone to war, but all those secrets died with the prophet of truth and the destruction of High Charity.

He also wondered if the Jiralhanae would ever come to their senses and instead of fighting the Intergalactic Union, the government of races that was formed after the Human-Covenant war. The brutes were another thing to worry about as well, especially if this is a trap set by their Chieftains to destroy the head of the Elite military and a high ranking political figure.

"Pondering are we?" came the voice of Rtas as he entered the Arbiter's quarters.

"Yes" he replied "why haven't the brutes ceased their attacks, what do they hope to gain?"

"Who knows, they are merely animals that only care for war" Rtas replied "the forerunner database that we uncovered in the slipspace portal on earth shows that."

"Everybody knows they achieved space flight then bombed themselves back to pre industry and learned nothing" the arbiter got up from his chair "But that doesn't mean that they aren't intelligent fighters, especially when it's all they know."

"I will have my SpecOps Elites be prepared in case we have to go planet side and establish a stronghold." Rtas began to leave the Arbiter's quarters when he issued one final order "make sure to scan the planet's surface the moment we exit slipspace, I want to know about everything there is about that planet."

"By your command, Arbiter" Acknowledging the order as Rtas left for the bridge.


	3. Recon

Part 3: Recon

After about an hour of jogging the Master Chief reached the beacon. As he approached the facility, he realized something, it was old, and bits of concrete were lying on the ground outside the facility, there was plasma scarring on the double door entrance.

"There was a battle here" Cortana said to the chief.

The chief looked around and noticed something unusual about the battle damage, there were pock marks created by bullets. Noticing this he found shell casings on the ground. Picking one of the casings up "this are from UNSC weapons" he remarked

"We've been here before, humanity that is." Cortana said.

"Yes…, yes we have" the chief replied as he put his back to the wall before edging closer to the door. Nothing showed on his radar but that didn't mean that there wasn't something on the other side, waiting to ambush him. His body closed in on the door, he reached out and pressed the door release button.

The door slowly creaked open as the rusty door moved across its track. Dust was kicked up as the stagnant air from inside the complex was greeted by fresh air. The chief whipped around the door, leveling his assault rifle against his shoulder, sweeping from left to right he scanned the dimly lit entryway. From what he could tell there was a computer terminal inside the entry way, maybe he could use it for some Intel on this facility.

He flicked on his flashlight; with it pointed at the wall it revealed the plasma scarring and bullet holes of a fierce battle, there weren't any covenant corpses, plenty of dead UNSC marines though, their bodies either burnt from the plasma or torn apart. Others worse looked as though something had mauled or eaten parts of their faces, reducing any chance of recognizing them to zero.

As the Master Chief entered the facility further, he noticed something even stranger, there was a person crouched over a corpse. It crouched there mumbling to itself. As the chief approached he called out to it and said "every things going to be all right. We're getting you out of here." The chief proceeded to place his hand on the person. At that very moment the human turned its head and revealed a grotesque face covered in blood, with bits of flesh stuck between its teeth. The site of this creature surprised the chief. Taken aback the chief swiftly stepped back as the creature attempted to lunge at him.

Raising his rifle the chief then orders the creature to cease and desist, to no avail. The creature continued to move, like it was driven by instinct and a need to feed, almost like a zombie. But that couldn't be the chief had thought to himself, zombies only existed in movies and horror stories. As the zombie-like creature crept closer to the chief, the chief became extremely uncomfortable with the situation.

"If you do not cease and desist I will be forced to open fire" the chief gave his final warning, shortly before firing a short controlled burst into the zombie. The AP rounds from his assault rifle tore through the flesh of the zombie causing it to hit the floor in a crumpled heap. Satisfied that it was dead, the chief began to look for a light switch somewhere, when he heard a ringing coming from the terminal.

As he approached the terminal the ringing stopped and was replaced by an A/V feed of a man, in standard UNSC battle armor. "Hey! You there!" he said "are you here to rescue us?"

"What's your situation marine?" Cortana inquired.

"What? Did they only send two of you?" he asked frantically looking for more soldiers behind the chief. "cuz your gonna need an army of SPARTAN's to fight these… these things!"

"What those zombie creatures? They don't seem that tough" Cortana said.

"Ha those things are the least of our worries! There are bigger and meaner things to deal with than those former shells of themselves." The man replied as hissing was heard over the comm. line. "what the… you guys need to get down here I don't have much time to explain there are survivors scattered throughout this complex, we need to rescue them and get out of here. Don't be surprised if there a little…well nuts. If you had seen what happened down here right after the invasion you would be too. But for now head through the Alpha labs, wait there until I can give you further instructions" soon after the video cuts and the blast from a shotgun is heard followed by another as more hissing is heard. "I'll try to keep in contact with you two, just remember to keep my patched through on you radio."

"Affirmative" the chief said "Cortana can you pull a map of the facility from this terminal?"

"I can try" she said shortly before the chief placed her inside the terminal. "Ok I got something. It's not much, just a partial map of this area, the marine command, and a commons area."

'Better than nothing' the chief thought as he pulled Cortana from the system. The map overlaid itself onto his HUD and was marked with the locations of marine command and the commons area. The chief started out of the entrance and towards marine command, thinking that if there were marines stationed here than there's has to be some ammo somewhere.

A/N there is a poll on my profile that everybody reading this fic and enjoying it should participate in, if you don't then I'll have to decide what boss demons from doom the chief will have to fight instead of you the reader and fans. The poll will close on December 10th. And sorry for taking so long on getting chapter 3 up.


	4. Devils Monsters

Chapter 4: 13 Devils... Monsters

As the Chief approached the commons area, he noticed that something seemed amiss, as red lights winked on and off of his motion tracker, almost like it was moving in and out of range.

"Cortana, are you reading this data?" the chief asked.

"Yes, it's almost like its coming from the ventilation shafts." At that moment a grating for the ventilation system crashed to the ground with a loud crash, the chief spun about and leveled his weapon at the grate. When he locked himself into place, a red blip appeared on his motion tracker shortly before the chief was knocked onto the ground. His helmet hit the ground HARD. The chief attempted to move but was incapable of moving, something was on top of him and it was strong.

The creature attempted to claw at the chief's back but his shields flared and frightened the creature, giving the chief the advantage he needed to push the creature off of him. As the chief stood up he took a moment to size up his attacker, it was humanoid, it had lanky limbs and looked like it could stand roughly seven feet. The chief looked desperately for his rifle, as the creature stood up, the chief found it; the creature was standing between him and his rifle.

The creature leaped forward, attempting to pin the chief to the ground. The chief grasped the monster's hands, their fingers interlocking as they struggled. Despite being clad in half a ton of armor the creature was pushing the chief back towards the wall. The chief braced and pushed back, after getting the demon to move he uses all of his strength to throw the demon down the darkened hall way. Rushing forward he grabs his rifle and levels it. His motion tracker showing all clear, he enters the darkened hallway he switches his helmet to night vision mode.

As the night vision came up the chief looked for the body and found nothing. Preceding slowly the chief kept his rifle leveled his finger on the trigger, ready for combat. As the chief approached a corner he pressed his back up against the wall, peeking his head around the corner, the chief, quickly ducked back around the corner as hot plasma flew by where his head was, followed by a loud screeching hiss. 'Why didn't that thing show up on my motion tracker?!' he thought as he prepped a frag grenade and tossed it down the hallway.

As the grenade tinked down the hall, the demon moved closer to inspect it, the demon's curiosity getting the better of it. The grenades detonation forces the creature against the wall as the explosive force tears through the demons body. The shrapnel pinging off of the walls and tearing through the flesh of the demon, causing it to screech as it dies its body slumps to the floor as the cloud of smoke settles.

The chief quickly turned around the corner and leveled his rifle at the remains of the creature. Taking up a defensive position against the wall, the chief accessed his diagnostic utilities and ran a complete diagnostic of his suit.

"What are you hoping to find" Cortana asked him.

"Why my motion tracker didn't pick up his movement." The scan came back and it displayed the problem on his screen. The system reported that the radar and IFF system had become damaged. He pulled his helmet off and inspected the damaged area. There was a crack running along the side of the helmet.

The days of fighting on earth and on the Ark without regular maintenance were hell on his suit. The hard landing on the floor and that plasma must have been the final straw for the helmet. Placing the helmet back on his head after he takes one final look at it, making sure nothing else could be wrong with it. The helmet slipped back on, with the hiss of air as it sealed itself from the outside. The chief readied his weapon, hopefully he wouldn't encounter anymore of those things on his way to the marine command.

Walking down the hall he approached an open room that had two exits. Placing his back against a wall, the chief scanned the walls of dimly lit room, looking for anything that could be considered out of the ordinary. As he proceeded into the room, his rifle at the ready, he enlarged his mini-map of the area.

His map showed the two paths leading to marine command and the other leading to the commons area. His need for ammunition and a secure base camp prompted him to take the shortest path to marine command. With any luck, his trek to the command post would be quick and free of those things that attacked him.


	5. Perilous Journey

Chapter 5: Perilous Journey

As the chief traveled down the hallway towards the Marine Command post, he kept ever vigilant looking out for those things. The further he went the more disgust he came across, human limbs separated from their bodies, or worse bodies without limbs. Blood was smeared on the walls spelling out "we're fucked" along with drawings of pentagrams, of which glowed with a demonically captivating aura.

Down the hallway further there was a locked room, a soft cry could be heard from the room, like someone was lost and confused, and didn't know if help would arrive. The chief opened the security panel on the door, "Cortana, get me in that room." He said as he inserted the memory crystal into the doors interface.

As Cortana slipped into the base's computer system, she discovered the robust security measures and the counter intrusion software that was used here was strictly for ONI use. It wasn't anything that she couldn't handle, but well above what she was expecting for this rundown outpost. The software they used was at least twenty eight years old. Then she encountered something that she didn't expect.

'Access Restricted… you are in direct violation of ONI protocols cease and desist.'

An AI, not just any thing another smart AI, this one has to be late into the stages of rampancy. Communicating with it would help her and the chief discover more about this facility but could they really trust it? She decided she had to take the risk.

"What happened here?" She queried.

'Containment of non-human life forms failed, containment protocols breached, base lockdown initiated three hours after containment failed.'

Cortana was puzzled, on why they waited so long to initiate the base lockdown. Overlooking that fact she proceeded to unlock the door for the chief, deciding that she has wasted enough time. After bypassing the first two security measures on the door, she was stonewalled by the AI.

'Do not proceed any further, or I will have no choice but to purge you from the system.'

"I'd like to see you try" Cortana stated adamantly to the other AI, daring it to attempt such an act.

'As you wish' the AI began to throw kill systems down around Cortana, nothing that she couldn't handle, but it would hinder her progress if she remained in the system for too long. She began bypassing the door's final security measure.

"Okay, doors open, pull me out" she said to the chief.

The chief pulled her crystal from the door and slid it back into place in his helmet. The familiar chill of her synchronizing with him and the suit flooded his mind. "That took you longer than usual." He commented.

"I encountered some resistance" she replied curtly.

"What kind of resistance?" the chief said curious as to what works on this base.

"A rampant AI that ONI left behind, that thing needs to be taken care of if we want any answers about this place." She said.

"Can't you just shut it down?"

"I can't so long as it has control of the systems. It has more resources at its disposal. On top of that its rampant so it could change in such a way that would make it unpredictable."

'Great another thing that can complicate things on this planet, as if there weren't enough things that were doing that.' The chief thought to himself as he entered the newly unlocked room with his rifle leveled. The further into the room he went the louder the crying became. Eventually behind a desk, he discovered a young woman cowering behind the desk. The chief lowered his rifle, and stretched out his arm towards the woman. "Ma'am, are you all right?"

Looking up the woman fell back before realizing that it wasn't something there to hurt her. "yes I'm fine, but may I ask who are you." She grabbed the chief's hand and with his help got up. "I'm Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, a SPARTAN-II." She gasped. "SPARTAN's… so the UNSC is actually taking this seriously."

"Ma'am, Taking what seriously?" the chief was puzzled, there was never a distress beacon that was picked up by Highcom. Not from this area of the galaxy, at least not one that he was informed about.

"We were invaded by those things! Surely you've come across at least one of them if your this far into the base." She fixed an over turned chair and sat down in it. "About three weeks ago their experiments with slipspace teleportation back fired on them and opened a portal to somewhere, and where ever it is you don't get tired, and its hot, at least that's what the reports indicated." Turning around in the chair she accessed a computer terminal, and brought up photographs of the other worldly place. Brownish red rocks in many photos, others had lava, and lots of it.

"We had been trying to develop a way to travel in slipspace faster than the covenant could, through teleportation." We could drop a whole battlegroup on top of a lightly armed covenant controlled world and wipe them out from orbit with minimal resistance the chief thought to himself. It woud also allow us to have ships disengage faster and allow for new battlefield tactics that could be used to eve the odds.

"We don't have to worry about that any more; the Human-Covenant War is over." The chief told the woman. "Covenant leadership was wiped out along with a schism within the covenant."

"I see, so all these deaths were for nothing, needless deaths that occurred during these past three weeks"

"Their deaths will only be meaningless if the report of failure doesn't get back to Highcom." The chief said "but more importantly what happened after the critical failure."

"Right" she said, "getting back to that, when we opened the portal, something dark, demonic and evil came out of it. At first it was just regular people, they changed into lifeless husks of their former selves. They began to attack others rather violently." Turning back to the chief, the woman looked to the floor before continuing. "Then something else came through the portal. They were humanoid, like us, but they were violent and they took more to put down. They began to poor out of the portal, faster than we could contain them. Eventually they overran the base and, took over."

"We need to stop this attempted invasion then" the chief said. "We have to disable the AI make our way to the Alpha Labs and link up with any remaining survivors. Ma'am what is your name?"

"Me? I'm Director Alice Lee Robinson." She said.

"Director, from this point forward this is a military operation, and I am assuming command. I want you to stay here for right now, once I have secured a more fortified location I will come and get you. If you could give me and Cortana updated logistical support for now, that would help immensely." This felt better for the chief, for the first time since he arrived at this facility, he felt like he had control, he knew his objective and what he needed to do to accomplish it.

"I'm going to lock this door before I leave, and take this." Ha handed her his Assault Rifle and his extra ammunition for it, use this if you have to defend yourself from anything. "All right" she said with a nod. "I'll provide you with what I can, but you're going to have to take care of that troublesome AI if you want anything more than just map information."

"Understood" the chief exited the room and locked the door with a manual override that should prevent the AI from tampering with it. The chief pulled his battle rifle from his back and leveled it, the extra punch that the battle rifle had would hopefully put his foes down quicker, maybe he could find a shotgun lying around here somewhere. That would give him the fire power he needed to put most anything down in one hit. The chief continued on his way towards marine command, walking down the limb strewn hallway.


End file.
